psychoceramics: god wimps out

[Ken Alexander <k--@e--.umich.edu>]

If you're going to predict apocalyptic miracles, never give specific dates,
at least not dates in the near future.  Sheesh.  What an amateur.

========== forwarded excerpt:

AANEWS for March 25, 1998

                      JESUS, UFO ARE NO-SHOW FOR TEXAS CULT
        "My Predictions...Can Be Considered Nonsense," Declares Leader

   God just didn't make it -- again.

   At 12:01 a.m. this morning, members of God's Salvation Church huddled in
front of television screens tuned to channel 18 waiting for an announcement
from Jesus Christ that he was on his way, and would be landing in person in
Garland, Texas in a flying saucer.

   That and other bizarre prophecies had been made by Chen Heng-Ming, known to
his followers as "Teacher Chen."  Mr. Chen, a former social sciences professor
from Taiwan, claims that he fathered Jesus Christ two millennia ago, and
communicates with the deity through a special ring which he wears.  He
predicted that today, March 25, Jesus would appear on Channel 18 on television
sets all over the world, to announce his arrival.  Other colorful predictions
involved evacuations from an apocalyptic holocaust next year, natural
catastrophe and calamitous events.  Sociologists have noted that these sorts
of doomsday predictions proliferate at the end of a century, and may be
heightened by the onset of a new millennium.

   Chen told an army of curious reporters, "Because we did not see God's
message on television tonight, my predictions of March 31 (the arrival of
Jesus in a UFO) can be considered nonsense."  He added, "I hope that everybody
can still have a true belief in God, in the existence of God.  Even though the
image doesn't show on the television, I don't have any reason to doubt the
existence of a supreme being, God."


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